Gpu question

Post by bigdatay011579

I just boight a HP Envy h8-1430. It had. 3.1 quad core i5, 10gig ram, 2048 gb solid state hard drive, nvidia geforce gt 620 gpu. The psu is a 460watt. I want to run wow with decent settings. What are my options for a better gpu under $100. Thanks!

Post by Myrroddin

You have a better GPU than I have (GTX 560 Ti) and I run on Ultra settings. You'll be fine with what you have now.

Post by bigdatay011579

I think you are mistaken. The 560 ti uses gddr5. It appears to be superior to my 620 using gddr3. And its a pricey card. Im looking for under $100 for a gpu.

Post by Fetzie

You have a better GPU than I have (GTX 560 Ti) and I run on Ultra settings. You'll be fine with what you have now.

A 560ti is much, much more powerful than a 620.

Post by Myrroddin

Oops, you guys are correct. Sorry, my error!

Post by Whaddafack

Oops, you guys are correct. Sorry, my error!

For future reference, the first number is the series number, and the 2 numbers at the end(in this case, 60) are the model number.

Post by Neffi

Don't refer to the variant of RAM or the amount when comparing two GPUs. While DDR5 is faster than DDR3 (by a factor of 2), it's not the whole story. For instance, DDR3 with a 512-bit bus is the same speed as DDR5 with a 256-bit bus (assuming the clocks are the same -- which they might not be). RAM is also not a great indicator of general performance. The amount of RAM has very little to do with the performance of the card, and the speed of the RAM is only of very situational importance.

What really matters is the GPU itself -- the processing chip on the graphics card.

A GT 620 is a GF108 (Fermi) chip with 96 cores. A GTX 560 Ti is a GF114 (Fermi) chip with 384 (or 448) cores. In raw compute performance, a 560 Ti should be at least 4 times more powerful (and more common 5-6 time or more). It also has a larger bandwidth bus, probably more GPU cache, and is a higher-end variant of the Fermi architecture.

In other words, don't directly compare model numbers like that.

When it comes to NVidia, the first number is the series, or in better terms the year the card was released. (It's supposed to refer to the chip architecture, but as you see lower-end cards from a given series use the previous series of chips: the 620 is a Fermi chip despite the 6 series being Kepler -- a totally new and faster GPU architecture). The only time the model numbers in a given series can be directly compared is when the prefix is GTX -- not GT, meaning a higher-end card using the latest architecture. For instance, a GTX 680 is better than a GTX 670, which is better than a GTX 660.

But you can't even necessarily say a GTX 660 is better than a GTX 580. Although it's a new (better) GPU architecture, it's a lower-end variant of that architecture whereas the 580 was the absolute best of its generation (in terms of single-GPU).

So now that you have an idea of the complexity of the matter, don't invest your money in parts just because some model number or name suggests its good. Google benchmarks, ie "GTX 560 Ti vs GTX 660". Unless you understand the complexity of GPU architectures, you're not in the position to make calls on what somebody should invest money into without solid data to back them up.

Post by gamingdiva2013

TI is 4 times more powerful? is that the case in every situation? Seems pretty optimistic

Post by Fetzie

TI is 4 times more powerful? is that the case in every situation? Seems pretty optimistic

Doesn't really matter how many times over the 560ti is than the 620. The fact remains that the 620 is good enough for nothing more than DVD/BluRay playback.

Post by Neffi

TI is 4 times more powerful? is that the case in every situation? Seems pretty optimistic

In raw compute power yes. In real world scenarios, very probably. The 620 is a piece of crap. It's a media GPU -- not even a low-end gaming GPU. Its purpose is browsing the web and playing HD video. (And I bet I can still make madVR give it a run for its money, if not totally choke it out, with high-profile 1080p and aggressive scaling). The 560 Ti is a gaming chip, and a fairly good one at that (mid-range for last gen). They're are in a totally different class.

Edit: The peak FLOPs of a 620 in a simple FMA situation is 155 GFLOPs. The 560 Ti classic (384 core) has a peak operation throughput in the same situation of 1.26 TFLOPs (1 T = 1000 G). That's close to 10 times more compute power in the 560 Ti. The 448-core variant adds another couple hundred, bringing it up to just about 10 times on the dot.

Not to mention, the 560 Ti has a much larger buffer, a faster RAM bus, probably more GPU cache and is optimized for raw realtime performance, not cost/power-usage. In practice, my "4 times more" figure is probably too conservative; I bet it's much more of an improvement than that.

Post by Fetzie

Why would anybody be considering anything under a GTX 650 or HD 7770 for gaming anyway? Better to save up another month for the extra 30 bucks than to spend 2 years getting more and more annoyed at your crap hardware.

All graphics cards below that 90-100 price bracket are for home-theatre PCs. They are no use at all for gaming.

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